The collaborative style of working at the OU has been incorporated into a practical expertise at hosting and running a wide range of working groups, workshops, all of which have produced research outputs. Recent workshops have included:

The Spatially Thinking Seminar Series (2009-2010)

A series of discussions continuing the department's focus on theorising space, highlighting the range and nature of spatial thinking within Geography and more broadly in Social and Cultural studies. Seminars are held at the Open University and for more information or to attend please contact Jan Smith, j.f.smith@open.ac.uk.

3 December 2009: 'Citizenship and the Inbetween City'
Dr Patricia Wood, York University, Toronto Canada

The German planner Tom Sieverts coined the term "Zwischenstadt" (roughly translated as "In-Between City") to describe urban development that is neither typically "urban" nor "suburban." In these spaces, large-scale infrastructure oriented towards global trade brushes up against residential communities that are often densely-populated, diverse, under-serviced, and locally-bound. This type of development now dominates new urban form in Canada and elsewhere, yet we have relatively little understanding of its economic, social and political complexity. Drawing on the results of several studies conducted for the project, "In-Between Infrastructure: Urban Connectivity in an Age of Vulnerability," at the City Institute at York University, Dr Wood considers the ways in which citizenship as a technology of governance is spatialized both by actors for the state and by citizens within this landscape. Framing this landscape not as one of neglect (as it often appears) but as one of contestation, and positing citizenship itself as a space of contest (or even conflict), she argues that the political spaces produced within it are creations specifically of these contests and conflicts, and raise questions about the potential and limitations for political action and the meaning of citizenship for residents of the in-between city.

Listen to the podcast from the seminar:

• Audio clip 1: Patricia Wood

11 November 2009, 14:00-16:00
Prof Nicky Gregson, University of Sheffield, with Kevin Hetherington & Nick Bingham

Prof Nicky Gregson, will argue that thinking about the material in cultural economy has much to gain from culture itself, and explores the potential of literary narrative for conceptualizing and writing material within a performative cultural economy. Drawing on the industrial short stories of Primo Levi (The Periodic Table, The Wrench, A Tranquil Star), Prof Gregson will highlight their foregrounding of material encounters, the importance of process (and not just product), materials' instability in process, and their connections to theorizations of economies as assemblage. The paper also explores how Levi writes material to presence using the techniques of narrative discourse, particularly mimesis. The paper concludes by arguing that narrative is a means to writing a performative cultural economy and that cultural economy needs to rekindle the arts of story-telling. Paying attention to literary narrative shows how this might be achieved.

Spatial Delights/An engagement with the work of Doreen Massey (March 2009)
Doreen Massey has been at the forefront of public and critical geography for many years. In this first of an ongoing lecture series, a panel of speakers, including Ash Amin, Olafur Eliasson, Ken Livingstone, Chantal Mouffe, Jamie Peck, Michael Rustin and Jane Wills, reflected on 'Space, Place and Politics', key interests that have been central to Doreen's work.

The Spatially Thinking Seminar Series (2008-2009)

A series of discussions continuing the department's focus on theorising space, highlighting the range and nature of spatial thinking within Geography and more broadly in Social and Cultural studies.

Seminar 5: 'Thinking with the Head: A Secular Ethics of Race and the Human'
Kay Anderson is Professor of Cultural Geography at the Centre for Cultural Research, University of Western Sydney

Prof Kay Anderson has researched and published extensively on cultural geography and race. Her most recent book is Race and the Crisis of Humanism (Routledge 2007). In this presentation she continues her work examining the possibility of a secular ethics of race and the human.

Listen to podcasts from the seminar:

• Audio clip 1: Kay Anderson

Seminar 4: 'Thinking Internationally'
Dr Ben Page, University College London with Dr David Humphreys and Dr Parvati Raghuram, The Open University.

4 February 2009

Listen to podcasts from this seminar:

• Audio clip 1: Ben Page
• Audio clip 2: Dave Humphries, Parvati Raghuram

Seminar 3: 'Spaces of/for Nature'
Dr Andrew Barry, University of Oxford, with Dr Stephen Hinchliffe and Dr Nick Bingham, The Open University.

28 January 2009

Listen to podcasts from this seminar:

• Audio clip 1: Andrew Barry
• Audio clip 2: Stephen Hinchcliffe

Seminar 2: 'Emotional Geographies'
Dr Ben Anderson, University of Durham, with Prof Gillian Rose and Professor Steve Pile, The Open University.

3 December 2008

Listen to podcasts from this seminar, chaired by Prof Gillian Rose:

• Audio clip 1: Ben Anderson
• Audio clip 2: Steve Pile
• Audio clip 3: Gillian Rose
• Audio clip 4: Q & A

Papers:

• Dr Ben Anderson, Becoming and being hopeful: towards a theory of affect

Seminar 1: 'New State Spatialities'
Professor Joe Painter, University of Durham, with Professor John Allen and Professor Allan Cochrane, The Open University.

22 October 2008

Listen to podcasts from this seminar, chaired by Professor Jennifer Robinson:

• Audio clip 1: Joe Painter
• Audio clip 2: John Allen & Allan Cochrane
• Audio clip 3: Discussion

The Pedagogical State: Education, Citizenship, Governing

24-25 September 2008

This interdisciplinary symposium with international and UK researchers from human geography, sociology, political science and education considered the idea of the 'pedagogical state' as a means of understanding governance. Speakers, including Clarissa Rile Hayward, author of 'Defacing Power' and Denise Meredyth, whose recent publications include 'Citizenship and Cultural Policy', addressed questions of pedagogy and power, the strategies deployed by state and non-state agencies, and the experience of pedagogical governing practices. Read a summary of the symposium (PDF document, 100 KB)

Mediapolis: Media Practices and the Political Spaces of Cities

9-10 June 2008

This two-day interdisciplinary workshop, jointly funded by ESRC and the Department of Geography and organized by Scott Rodgers, Clive Barnett and Allan Cochrane, brought together scholars from across a range of disciplines into a dialogue on the political intersections of cities and media. Although urban and media studies are typically pursued using contrasting spatial imaginations, this workshop asked participants to consider what difference it makes to consider the intersection of these areas by specifically emphasizing political practices. For more information on the workshop, including a final report, visit the Mediapolis website.

Rediscovering School Geographies workshop (2008)

14 May 2008, The Open University

This workshop, a joint initiative of the Geography Department and The Faculty of Education and Language Studies at the Open University brought together academic geographers, geography educators and school geography teachers to debate the state of geography in schools in England, to outline some of the recent history of geography curriculum reform, to introduce academic geographers to some of the innovative work of geography teachers and to consider future opportunities for reconnecting the important work of geography in schools and geography in universities. Read the workshop summary report (PDF document, 150 KB)

Questioning 'Neoliberal' Environmental Governance

13-14 September 2007

Researchers that address nature-society relations are increasingly debating the realisation that many of the problems they address, and perhaps even the way they think, are influenced by 'neoliberal' ideas and practices. However, the debate is clouded by the way that such ideas are differentially implemented across time, place and type of resource. This hinders evaluation of the assumptions and justifications of neoliberalism, and of the effects of neoliberal policy interventions. These emerging debates raise a series of questions that this workshop addressed, including:

• How has neoliberalism varied over time and space? To what extent is it a unifying process, temporally, spatially and politically?
• For whom, and in what circumstances, does it have positive or negative consequences?
• What are the politics underlying processes of 'neoliberalisation' of nature?
• How is 'nature' conceptualised to justify 'neoliberal' approaches? And how do such processes 'depoliticise' natural resources and their modes of management?
• What contribution can concepts of hybridity bring to debates on 'neoliberalism and nature'?
• Is 'neoliberalism' still a useful concept; or, by continuing to use it, are we risking reifying a term that we are acknowledging to be problematic?

The Politics of Comparison (2007)

5-6 September 2007, Durham University (Day One); The Open University's Regional Centre in Newcastle (Day Two).

The workshop was jointly funded by the Geography Departments at OU and Durham, and co-organized by Colin McFarlane (Durham) and Matthew Kurtz (OU). The programme assembled OU/Durham geographers and guests to rethink issues of comparativism, beginning with a keynote presentation by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (Columbia University).

Participants were asked to consider various engagements in comparativism, as well as critiques of the projects of categorization and comparison produced in the wake of modernity and colonialism. Questions for the workshop included: How is comparative knowledge itself constructed differently in various times and places? How have different politics and institutions given shape to various schools of comparative research and diverse processes of understanding?

ESRC/OU "Identities" workshop (2007)

On 5 February 2007 the ESRC Identities Programme invited geographers from the Open University to participate in a brain-storming workshop to discuss the relationship between identity and place/space. Instead of the usual paper-giving, the day included "show and tell" and "conversations with" sessions. Finally, the day ended with Professor Doreen Massey discussing issues from her latest book, For Space (2005), and her forthcoming book on London.

Interdependence Series (2006/7)

The Interdependence Day project is a research, communications and participation project centred on taking a fresh tone and approach to global issues. The project is rooted in research generated by the critical social science practiced within the Open University Geography Department. Researchers have explored the nature and significance of interdependencies within and between the social and natural worlds, especially in work on biodiversity and climate change research. Two UK research funding councils, the ESRC and NERC have collaborated to fund (among others) the Interdependence seminar series that has helped to shape the project. The seminars and workshops that have made up the programme have worked in innovative ways to create space to consider the extent to which 'interdependence' is or could be a powerful reference point in demanding both policy and public engagement in environmental change issues. Participation has included natural and social scientists, journalists, policy and communications professionals and artists. Discussions have explored the ethical implications of research as much as the work itself: what kinds of response/responsibilities are implied by new knowledge in these fields, not just for the policy community, but also for researchers? Environmental policy and political debates have drawn freely on a stock of environmentalist rhetoric regarding interconnections. The academic community, while more wary and often critical of this rhetoric, may be nursing similar assumptions and commitments, albeit implicitly. The seminar series has worked to reveal these and reflect upon their consequences. For more details see the Interdependence Day website.

Interdependence Day Seminar

Giving space, taking time: hospitality and generosity (2006)

Giving Space, Taking Time: A Workshop on Hospitality and Generosity at Ashridge, Berkhamsted on 22-23 March 2007 (organised by Mustafa Dikec, Clive Barnett, Nigel Clark). A symposium coinciding with the stay of visiting research fellow Rosalyn Diprose which sought to extend discussions of the politics and ethics of hospitality and generosity in new directions. It brought together perspectives from philosophy, anthropology, literary and cultural studies, sociology and geography to explore the historical and geographical contexts from which understandings of hospitality and generosity can be worked up, with particular attention to the distinctive space-times in which encounters between guests and hosts are generated. The participants were Rosalyn Diprose, Diane Morgan, Joanna Zylinska, Andrew Shryock, Judith Still, Mireille Rosello, Heidrun Friese and Doreen Massey. We have a proposal currently under consideration to publish the papers from the symposium in a special edition of the interdisciplinary journal Paragraph under the title Extending Hospitality: Giving Space, Taking Time. The symposium was funded by a grant from the Geography Discipline research fund.

Publics and Markets (with CCIG, OU and Durham) (2006)

October 2006

Co-organised by Clive Barnett with Janet Newman (CCIG) and Susan Smith (Durham) at OU in MK; participants from UK, Italy, Netherlands. The workshop built on previous events organised by Geography and CCIG on the theme of publicness, and reflected on the various meanings and values ascribed to the public and publicness in different areas of research, policy and practice. The workshop provided the basis of a successful application by Barnett and Smith to the ESRC for a Seminar Series on Emerging Publics.

Political infrastructures: governing the fabric of the city (June 2006)

While conventional accounts of urban politics often relegate infrastructures to apolitical context or backdrop, a diversity of recent literature has sought to show how infrastructures, cities, and states are produced and transformed together. A range of scholars have demonstrated the centrality of infrastructures in the construction of the city as 'modern', as a site of capitalist expansion and transformation, and in the social relations of inequality in the city. This includes, for instance, work on: the emergence of specialised, privatised and customised infrastructures; the relationship between urban ecologies and social differentiation; and the role of infrastructures as mediators of globalisation or as geopolitical military targets.

This workshop builds on these debates by considering how a focus on infrastructures helps to understand the governing of the urban. It explored two sets of closely inter-related questions, the first more explicitly concerned with governing, and the second more concerned with contingency and resistance.

A Cultural Economy of Finance (with CRESC) (2005)

The colloquium was held at the Open University 15-16 September 2005. It brought together academics interested in exploring cultural economic approaches to the present global financial system. The colloquium considered features of the current financial system such as:

• The making and performance of financial markets: how do the institutions and organizations of the financial system create and perform finance?
• Finance and movement: what moves and what 'materially heterogeneous practices' put the flow into capital flows?
• Greed, panics, exuberance, ...: what place for emotions in accounts of the performance of financial economics?
• Are numbers beyond the reach of cultural economy? How should a cultural economy approach deal with financial data?
• The 'world making' of financial markets: if making financial markets makes worlds, how might cultural economy provide access to such processes?
• What is financial knowledge? How does finance get to know the world?
• What might a cultural political economy of finance look like? Accounting for states, regulations and governance.Debating 'banks' versus 'the market': what analytical contribution might cultural economy make to the debate?

A selection of the papers are forthcoming in a special issue of Economy and Society.

Urban culture and development (2004)

The place of culture in urban development is a strong theme of urban research in wealthier countries: culture industries, the creativity of cities, the importance of social cohesion and the intangible cultural components of economic transactions, for example. This workshop began rather with the profound challenges of urban development in South Africa and some different themes come to the fore: planning in the face of diverse cultures, the importance of social and cultural networks to survival strategies, the disruptive effects of conflict and violence, whether harnessing the vitality of city spaces can go along with urgently needed investments in basic services. These themes are also relevant to many different kinds of cities around the world, including wealthier cities. Starting with issues and questions posed through post-apartheid South African cities, the workshop quickly moved out into a world of related cities where these diverse aspects of culture and development are explored. Most of the papers were published as a Special Issue of Urban Studies Vol 43, 2 (Urban Culture and Development: Starting with South Africa).

New spaces of democracy in post-apartheid Durban (2004)

This workshop was the final event of the Leverhulme Research Interchange project between OU, LSE, and University of KwaZulu-Natal that ran from 2003-2004. The overall aim of the workshop was to develop a conversation amongst geographers and others concerning the conceptualisation of 'democratization' processes, understood in the broadest sense. The establishment of democratic government in South Africa since 1994 saw the proliferation of new forms of political organisation, new practices of participation, and new modes of representation and accountability. The workshop invited participants to explore and reflect on the significance of this range of innovations in democratic practice. In Durban, as in other major South African cities, this process has involved the spatial restructuring of electoral politics, party formation, and voting patterns; the development of new practices of conflict resolution, consultation, and participatory policy-making; and the emergence of new grassroots struggles for media visibility and community mobilisation. A key question for consideration was how the experience of democratisation in Durban might inform wider theories of democratisation. Some of the papers are to be published in Urban Forum.

Reconstituting natures (2004)

Conceived and organised by Steve Hinchliffe and Nick Bingham, and funded and hosted by the Geography Discipline of the Open University, the Reconstituting natures workshop was held in Milton Keynes on the 2nd and 3rd December 2004. The event was designed as space in which invited participants could explore whether there is still a political-intellectual argument to be made for paying attention to natures at a moment when the modern notion of Nature seems to have stopped playing its traditional role so effectively. Presenters – speaking to specially written, pre-circulated discussion papers – included Annemarie Mol (University of Twente, The Netherlands), Dave Featherstone (University of Liverpool), Kristin Asdal (TiK, Norway), David Demeritt (Kings, London), John Law (University of Lancaster), Steve Hinchliffe (OU), Matthew Kearnes & Phil Macnaghten (University of Lancaster), Nick Bingham (OU), Gail Davis (UCL), Ingunn Moser (TiK, Norway), and respondents included Noortje Marres (University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands) and Doreen Massey (OU). Rich interactions over the two days led to the issues raised being pursued by a number of those involved at subsequent workshops in Lancaster, Oslo, and Rosendal, Norway in 2005 and 2006, and a selection of the papers being reworked and collected for a special issue of Geoforum published in 2008.

Non-representational geographies (2000)

Members of The Open University and the University of Bristol Geography Departments organized a colloquium on non-representational geographies to explore the issue and to move the debate on - around embodied ways of knowing and doing, and around the practices and politics of everyday life. The two-day event was held in September 2000 at The Open University.